Open water, rock shoreline, a floating steel tube boathouse, and styrofoam floating dock behind it. Small bay, all solid bedrock.

Dog kills a kit, I get a call. Shot three kits the first night, set a sauvageau in the dock and got a monster momma beaver that night. Re set the trap. Go there tonight, and trap is sprung....

And daddy beaver, who I didn't see in the dark busted me, smacked his tail and off he went. Was swimming behind the dock. He no doubt saw the female in the trap, and he knows the game now. He was very spooky.

There are two birch trees and some brush at the back of the bay, and since I haven't used castor yet, I may try and get a castor set in with a 750 on a drowner. Need a ton of wire to drown him, because it is pretty shallow, but I don't wanna try a Conibear, and mess up my one chance at him. Id hate to condition him against castor, and Conis.

My only other thought is try and fit a 750 in the dock, because he is still using the dock, but I figure no way he will go near a Conibear now.

If I had been thinking id have tried to fit two traps in the first night, but there isn't much room in the dock

Any other ideas?

Never trapped around docks.Look for his den or his castor mound and set the haul out with the foothold.

Well, being all bedrock, the reason they have young in boat docks is because there literally are no dens. On my line alone, there will be close to twenty litters of young ones born in floating docks or boathouses because we have zero each on shore. I can walk the perimeters of the thousand or so islands on my line and find almost zero beaver sign. The only telltale signs are chewed down beaver sticks and bewildered cottagers with a property full of stumps .

The average person would take a look and think there are no beavers there whatsoever. They raise litters, and live for the better part of summer in boat docks, boathouses and the few random houses they make out of mud dredged up from way down underwater. Then at night, everything comes alive and you can see beaver swimming everywhere. I set up three docks last night, and I know almost every inch of this part of the line. There is no suitable house sites for a mile in every direction. And the two closest houses, I cleaned out last year. One was stuck up under a sauna and deck on the shore. Perfect site for a house here because they don't have enough mud to make a roof for the house, and they need some kind of structure overhead to start. A large number of them die over winter because they make a home in a dock, then try and add mud to winterrize it, and get froze out. There is not enough mud, and a dock freezes from underneath. Great summer cottages, lousy winter homes.

If I need to make a castor mounds, I bring dirt from here on mainland, or at the marina where there is a bit of mud. Or just push up debris if any is around.

It is an interesting place to trap, for sure. Nine nuisance beaver so far. Hope to get to fifteen by the weekend.

Ok he's spooked. Have you considered a Koro/Hancock trap? you can hide the back with burlap or vegetation from the area. I would suggest getting some castor or squeeze one of the ones you caught and use that as lure. This has worked for us many times. Hang the trap anywhere the beaver is swimming. You will be using a scent of his family and this should culm his fear of the trap.
Have caught many escapee's over the years and this is the best re-catch we use. Only other I know of would be to blind set somewhere, but it sounds like your shore is tough.
Good Luck
Don LaFountain

I'll show you how I set docks. Genius if I say so lol!

I'll show you how I set docks. Genius if I say so lol!

Blind set would be nice, but a lack of places to set it. I may let him cool off for a bit and set it back up in a week. I can likely make a cubby of sorts with castor and use a foothold, but it might be worth looking at a different type of trap.

And gall, you likely just set a trap, put it on the dock,and "that's a set!"

Lol

Attach a piece of plywood or paneling to the side of a stall in the boat dock at least 18 inches wide and down into the water 6 inches. Hang a snare with an 8 to 9 inch loop with 1/4 of the snare above the water and a closed fist width from the plywood to the closest edge of the snare in the middle of the plywood. Nail a cotton ball covered with castor in the middle of the wood in line with the snare about 12 inches above the water in line with the snare.

The snare needs to be short with just enough cable to hang and the swivel reach the wood. I use a snare swivel plus a regular trap swivel attached that will act as a drowning slide. Drive a nail into the wood just above the waters edge wrap wire around it leaving a hook bent up to hang the swivel on. May have to bend it over to make the wire solid.

I use cable or # 9 wire for the drowning wire. Attach solid to the boat dock close to the snare drowning swivel area. I have a large coffee can of cement with a eye bolt in the top as a drowning weight. If the water is deep enough I put 8 feet of wire straight down. If shallow I run it out to deeper water at least 6 to 8 feet deep. He can move the coffee can a very short distance but will try to go to deep water. If hung straight down he can swing it but not come up.

The wood in the stall needs to be away from any corner 4 to 5 feet. The beaver will swim by trying to work the castor and be in the snare almost every time. I drive a nail into the plywood below the cotton ball, wrap the wire to hang my snare around it and then bend the nail over tight against the wood to keep my snare wire solid.

This will work on the outside wall of the dock also. Do not tie him to the dock as he will eat it up. Yep, proven fact.

If the boat dock is wood reaching with-in 2 or 3 inches from the water no plywood is needed.

TrapperKent

Can't use snares for beaver in Ontario unless they are set under ice.

And funny you say that Hutch lol!

Lol

If the ADC guys you are using aren't any good gimme a call lol!

If the ADC guys you are using aren't any good gimme a call lol!

Where do all these beaver live In the winter after freeze up?

A month to two weeks before freeze-up, houses on shore start popping up in really stupid spots. Some seem to head for more muddy bays and make a house, some try (and fail) to mud over a floating dock, or shore dock. A lot throw together a house in amongst huge riprap, often microwave sized to car sized rocks, and make a house. I'd say ninety percent of these houses only last a few years and either the water level changes, or for whatever reason the beavers die. Freeze out likely.

I could take a two hour video, and drive from one end of the line to the other, and the only time you see beaver sign is a the odd stump and dead beaver house.

Every now and then in winter I see spots where the beaver chew out, usually in late feb, early March. The beaver I get out of these spots are usually starving. When you go back in spring and look for a house, or anything resembling a place a beaver could live, all you see is rock shoreline.

You might be giving the Papa too much credit. Give him a week or two to cool off and go back in like you normally would and make the sets that you know will catch run-of-the-mill beaver. If that doesn't work out, them you truly have an educated beaver, or he left Dodge. Sometimes we as trappers get spooked about what we assume are spooked beaver and don't do what we have been successful doing all along.

Since you are allowed to shoot in this area. Why not shoot the last one ?

I am going to wait a week. I'll see what happens.

Also, if need be, I can shoot him. Not knowing where he actually lives makes timing an issue, but I may throw a chunk of castor on shore in the bay and wait for him. Castor with a twist. Lol

Beaver that have been slapped can be a mess to trap as we all know. Won't hurt to let him cool down a spell, a few weeks. Might be able to get him in a foot trap with a little bit of fresh bait. If he's not wised up to castor, a drop of two might bring him into a foot trap. As Don mentioned, perhaps castor from the female. Bailey traps can be hidden like a foot trap.

Hancock/KORO traps work well too. Here is one my son picked up this morning.

Why is his beak all white?

The "humane" Hancock cage rash, most likely.

If you saved big moma's oil sacs, use one or two drops of her sac oil at whatever trap set you choose. If he thinks big moma is back, he will not be as wary of the set.

If you can use a snare make a pole set using the dock support as the pole and scent holder. pole set is my preferred summer set. I use a 9 to 12 foot snare and extension to keep he swimming and not causing problems

Well, I tried a few more sets just to see. No more fresh sticks, no more sigh, nothing.

Safe to say they are all gone. I did however get one more large male from another job I was doing a mile and a half away. Six beaver out of that job, and I expected five. I imagine I got the male I was after, but at another job. Two more jobs to set up weekend.

Lots of beaver this year.